Tourism and indigenous peoples

Strategies stressing the urgent need for policies and practices to ensure tourism development be in line with principles of sustainable development have been recommended by a wide range of international agencies and instrumentalities. These include the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UN-WTO), The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), regional UN commissions, international conservation bodies such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), many conservation NGOs and the international banks. In 2002, the International Year of Ecotourism brought together the largest gathering of all stakeholders involved in ecotourism, and interested in more sustainable forms of tourism. It focused much attention and interest on the ecological, social and cultural costs and benefits of tourism. This same year the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) drew attention to tourism and its potential to support the UN Millennium Development Goals. The following year the International Ecotourism Society and the Centre on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development prepared 'Rights and Responsibilities' a compilation of Codes of Conduct for Tourism and Indigenous Local Communities (Honey and Thullen, 2003) in recognition of the need for sustainable tourism to be 'an instrument for the empowerment of local communities, for the maintenance of cultural diversity and for the alleviation of poverty'.